


Equations

by missmuffet



Category: Fantastic Four (Comicverse), Spider-Man (Comicverse)
Genre: Headcanon, High School, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-06-17
Updated: 2012-06-17
Packaged: 2017-11-07 22:37:45
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,090
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/436210
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmuffet/pseuds/missmuffet
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Johnny is terrible with numbers. Peter Parker is not.<br/>"Assuming friction here isn't dissipative, but rather, grows exponentially, how much can we get done before narrowly avoiding getting caught?"</p>
            </blockquote>





	Equations

**Author's Note:**

  * For [compos_dementis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/compos_dementis/gifts).



**I.**

The first time Johnny Storm chokes, it is in the eighth grade. Should anyone ever dare to mention the horrifying event to him, he would glare and call them a liar, only for them to in return, start rattling of details about the event. By the time they reach the point when his face started to change colors, or how he stammered and gasped, Johnny would slap a hand over their mouth. "It was a peanut MnM, alright? Let it go asshole...." But, of course, Johnny knew otherwise. He was not so incompetent as to choke on food but he would rather earn laughs and teasing over that than the truth. 

The first time Johnny Storm chokes is in the eighth grade and he is standing before one Elizabeth Baker, a stammering, red-faced fool. Summer vacation starts soon, which means he'll have some actual time to spend with Susan. Summer vacation starts soon, which means he won't have to worry about getting dressed in the morning or spilling any sort of a mess over his nice clothes, or worry about ripping them. Better yet, summer vacation means no more struggling to keep his head floating in the forming popularity contest so they'll be no reason to freak out when the pocket to his jeans completely gets ripped off because Susan will be right there to fix it. True, he'll literally have to drop to his knees and beg her, swear that she isn't conforming to any dominant social practice and then get in a shouting match with her about maybe if she _helped_ him for once in her life, they'd be better off than they were. To which, a nice, "You selfish _brat,_ how _dare_ you?" would be spat out at him and she would spend the next ten minutes ranting about how she does nothing _but_ take care of him. Someone's door would slam and for one reason or the next, he'd awake with the pair of jeans patched up the next day.

Summer vacation was a gift not because of the lack of classes  god, no, he _thrived_ off of those, fed off of the distraction they provided  but because he could wake up as early as he wanted and go to bed whenever he wanted as well. The vast majority of his classmates would take every opportunity to sleep in until noon. As for Johnny, he would wake up, bright and early, half past seven. He would not bitch and moan and he certainly wouldn't complain about it because Johnny Storm is in the eighth grade the first time he chokes in front of a girl. He can hardly push out the question and, in hindsight, he doesn't consider himself successful of even accomplishing that. _"W-would so, um, on the  me and I thought"_ Then no words come out. Nothing at all because his throat must be closing on him and his heart is pounding hard and fast, up in his ears. His face burns a dark red, starting from his ears and then spreading across his cheeks until he's worried about going light headed from it. He thinks he managed to push out a small, barely there whisper of, _" you a-an' me",_ but he could just be making it up. 

He chokes because Elizabeth Baker is, to date, the prettiest girl (his age) that he has ever seen in his young life. She is a quiet girl, one whose mother clearly must be concerned about her getting dragged off in some dark alley because even though they're both almost high schoolers, Elizabeth _still_ has days in which she comes to school with her hair in a braid and wearing paint stained overalls. She takes ballet, she wants to be a teacher and she's in several painting programs a year hosted by the Museum of Modern Art; so Johnny thinks to himself that surely she must be the kindest girl in the world. (So he thinks he _definitely_ has a shot.) But it is Elizabeth Baker who is the first of Johnny's grade to notice that secret that has him stopping at the windows of countless shops with a jealous gaze so strong it makes him sick. After his first and worst rejection, Elizabeth Baker unknowingly goes for the jugular. 

She finished her cruel laugh and then tilted her head as soon as the recollection hit her. Then she pulled back in disgust, without any apparent reason why. Her voice held no special power, her voice wasn't particularly different from that of a different girl their age, but it was loud enough to carry across the entire auditorium. It isn't the squeal of _"Ew!"_ that haunts Johnny, even to this day, and it's only partially the fact that at least half of his class turned their heads because of it. It is the words that followed that start to push Johnny into the conceited whore he is today. _"Didn't you wear that shirt the day before yesterday?"_

 **II.**

Summer vacation will be a total blessing because he has had his working papers filled out, ordered and submitted since the Friday after his fourteenth birthday. He wakes up hours before his classmates but he will never _dare_ to complain about it. Instead, Johnny and his ever brilliant genius tells him just how to get through the day and he slowly but surely becomes the amazing liar he is today. He gets to sleep in _two whole hours_ later than on a school day. He would get to spend the whole day _talking_ to people, without any numbers or math teachers telling him off for being in danger of flunking the class with their threats of, _"You can't stay on the team with less than a C+ in all of your classes, Storm."_ Which isn't fair at all; not when numbers just make no sense to him and he could rattle off the entire history of the ever expanding Ford motor empire, but his head just shuts off the minute you drop a list of trinomials in front of him with orders to factor them all and then multiply them. Summer vacation is amazing because two days out of the week  Saturdays and Sundays  he can surround himself with the objects of his jealousy and aspirations. All his friends would be out in the park playing ball or bumming the shopping districts of Long Island, but he could stammer out that he needed to build a decent resume before football season started up.

He would bullshit and brown nose his way into convincing customers that the costlier versions of clothing were, in fact, what looked best on them. He worked on commission and god help him, if there wasn't a single moment he could spend at work when he _wasn't_ on the brinks of a panic attack because of how many zeros came attached to that horrible word _debt._ So Johnny Storm spent every summer the same way  slaving away with the other servants of Banana Republic for that fifteen percent employee discount. He eyed Lord and Taylor and Saks from a distance, if for nothing else than the sheer status of it. _Maybe Ralph Lauren would be hiring soon._

Any day other than a weekend spent working from eight in the morning until two-thirty in the afternoon was also a blessing. Without the strain of impressing his classmates and avoiding their scorn or mockery, a day spent in his pajamas, cutting out coupons for Susan while she started early on her summer reading was oddly satisfying. After all, if he wore plain pajamas whenever possible, at least then he wouldn't have to worry about the fear of not being able to afford to replace them when they got trashed. He could always sleep in just his boxers. In fact, summers like that weren't uncommon either. Susan and Johnny had a mutual agreement that comments like, _"Sue walks around the house half naked,"_ and _"Johnny hasn't changed his clothes in a week,"_ were strictly off limits. It was too hot to walk around in anything more than their underwear and on more than one occasion, Susan grumbled about being jealous that she couldn't take off her top too.

"Well, you _could,_ but I'd kinda be scarred for the rest of my life," Johnny joked. "And then I'd need a lifetime of therapy and we really can't afford that right now." More often than not, he wouldn't guess in time that there was a pillow hurtling towards his face but he'd be all too willing to take up his sister's declaration at war. They were only kids. You couldn't grow up when the one person left to show you how was cracking worse and worse each day. Maybe half an hour into an intense pillow fight and Franklin Storm would stomp down from upstairs, eyes red and a dying scream on his lips.

"Can't you two behave for _five minutes?_ I'm trying to work!" Work of course, had something to do with figures for the gambling games happening upstairs. "What's wrong with you both? Go get dressed!" That was an old argument. It must have been a year or two (or five? He tries not to count) since they had someone to yell at them to behave. Instead, they naturally stopped at that same thirty-minute mark, chests heaving with laughter when Susan would roll over and remark that she was all sweaty now. Or that she smelled like a pig.

 **III.**

"God, you _stink,_ Johnny. When was the last time you actually bathed?" Johnny isn't sure of anything other than the fact it was _at least_ last Saturday morning. "Go shower! You're turning into a Petri dish."

Susan is doing her best to raise both herself and her younger brother but she lacks the refined traits of the practiced mother they lost to a car crash years ago. Still, she tries and does devote as much time as she can to Johnny during the summer to make up for all the times she blew him off unintentionally during the school year. By the time she leaves to study in college, across the country on scholarship, Johnny is lost. He can take care of himself just fine but there is an aching, disturbing hurt in his head and chest that something is wrong, something will go wrong. At worst, the best he can do to soothe this ache is remember to turn the shower water to cold. Hot water comes at a price tag, one that they haven't had the luxury of since their father's drinking and gambling sent them spiraling into debts so heavy, they've had the house nearly taken away twice by now. At best, Johnny finds himself dropping to his knees night after night with his head pressed into the rough edge of his mattress.

"Please god, please," he begs, hands clasped firmly together with that awful feeling suffocating him. He hasn't turned the lights on today. In fact, he's thinking that at the rate the electricity bill goes up, he'd best only use electricity to cook (wait, no, gas was a separate bill) and have one light on so he can finish any homework he's forgotten. The TV and VCR are long gone, pawned off to a store he finds himself visiting frequently. To think that he and Susan are still living in Long Island, of all boroughs, is absolutely ridiculously. Johnny's never been able to completely understand how they can afford the house's bills (thank god his parents had already started paying it off before the crash).

"Not Susan. Please don't take her away from me."

 **IV.**

Johnny is terrible with numbers. To him, none of the equations have ever made sense. 

Dad's debt plus ½ of his income plus ½ of Susan's, plus any extras they got from doing favors, minus living expenses, minus train and bus expenses for when school was out of session, plus pawned off money from cashed in birthday presents from friends How the hell he managed to keep up the illusion that him and Susan were rich was completely beyond him. He supposed it had something to do with getting better at rotating clothes and managing to keep their address. Johnny is terrible at numbers but he can cut corners just as well as he can speed cut coupons by now for he is nothing if not a skilled liar and king of bullshitting.

"I already ate," he informs Susan, glancing back down at a car mechanic's journal. When she questions it, he looks up and grins. "Yeah. I ate lunch real late at Devin's house and his mom cooked. I might have a stomachache later tonight but, no, I'm fine. Just make enough for yourself, alright?"

 **V.**

Johnny is terrible with numbers. Peter Parker is not. Not counting the beach party in which Parker, or Four Eyes as Johnny had taken to calling him since entering high school, witnessed Johnny accidentally scorching a classmate's face, it has been two weeks since they've known each other. "It's not that hard," Peter assures. "Look, I'll explain it again. Look at the trinomials, you want to be able to multiply them in the end, right?"

"But there's two sets of them and they're set up like fractions."

_"Hush."_ Johnny suspected it was the first time Puny Parker has ever been able to tell a jock that without getting slugged. The twitch of an almost smile on Parker's lips make that all too obvious. "We'll get to that but first we have to factor them. Know what that means? We have to simplify all the terms. Let's start with, ah, okay, so 12xy  _pay attention_  squared and we have a 3x on the bottom" Three hours later marks the end of his fourth tutoring session with the older teenager and Johnny still feels none the wiser about factoring. In fact, he still remembers the look on Parker's face when the other realized that Johnny was failing Algebra II two for the second time in a row. Given, he dropped the classes not even a month in the first time around but still. _("You flunked Algebra II? That class is so easy, a baby could pass  I mean..."_ Peter Parker doesn't catch himself in time to stop Johnny from shoving him into the wall.) 

The end of this particular tutoring session was also the first time he met Parker's Aunt May. Aunt May was a sweet, old woman who insisted that if Johnny felt comfortable with it, he was welcome to call her Aunt May as well. The Human Torch nodded and gave her a polite smile, "Yes ma'am." His manners (and maybe his popularity in school, if Aunt May can sense it) earn him an invitation to dinner. When Johnny goes to bed tonight, he will tell himself it is because he didn't want to be rude, however, deep inside he knows the real reason is because he'll never be one to turn down a _free_ meal.

_(Debt, debt, utilities, mortgage, debt.)_

At some point, he offered a golden nugget that he too lived with an aunt. In truth, she moved in with him and Susan when a neighbor found out the siblings had lived together alone since their father's incarceration. By sheer dumb luck, they managed to kidnap their aunt before child services ended up on their doorsteps to haul Johnny off into foster care. His own aunt is nothing more than a babysitter, someone to make sure both he and Susan are alive at the end of the day but at least it's another income to add to the equation. 

**VI.**

Mrs. Storm died long ago but it didn't take long for Johnny to realize what a real mother acted like. 

A real mother acted like Aunt May. She baked you treats for lunch or dinner and she fussed over you and reminded you to floss despite having a guest over. She came in to check on study sessions to offer you water or lemonade. Jealousy flares. Jealousy burns Johnny's core hotter than any flame could. Susan will never be a _real_ mother and she most certainly will never be a _good_ one.

How could she when she wasn't even aware that her pseudo-son had no friend named Devin?

 **VII.**

Johnny likes Peter, he really does. Maybe not like _that_ but the older boy is definitely interesting to be around. With the first stages of friendship tucked under their belt, Peter knew by now not to flinch when Johnny called him Four Eyes and Johnny knewnever to expect to like anything that Peter enjoyed. "You spend _how_ long playing this?" Face hidden behind a stack of collectable cards, not of baseball players or football players or a normal deck of card but of _made up_ creatures that weren't real at all, any faith in his reputation being able to survive his new friend left him.

"Hours, really, if you get into a good game and the other guy knows how to play well."

" Right." He minded his manners for a moment more, a skill he had earnestly tired to improve on. "And you think you stand chance with Mary Jane _why?"_ A shove informs him it's time to shut up. His attention drifts across the room. "Hey, that your camera? Do you have any shots of Spider-Man that never made it into _The Bugle?"_

 **VIII.**

"I still can't believe it."

"You've known for a whole year."

"Yeah but. You're _Spider-Man."_

"And you're the Human Torch. Point?"

_"You're Spider-Man!"_

"I thought we established that already, Johnny."

".Can I get your autograph?"

 **IX.**

"Merry Christmas!" Scrawny hands, nubby and slender fingers shove a brightly covered box into his face. Little Rudolphs dance beneath a light blue bow tied around the box, which is small, but the smile on the other's face tells him it will be worth it. A little tag threatens he can't keep it unless he waits for December twenty-fifth to open it. His own grin from moments ago fades as soon as he sees the gift, his face falls and his heart sinks to his stomach. Christmas is ruined, has been ruined, despite the holiday still being a week off. "What's the matter?" the sudden dread and hesitation in the other's voice makes him cringe further.

"I"

"Shit, did I fuck it up? You're not Jewish, are you? Er, happy Hanukah?" There was no grabbing for the gift, just a head dropped low, a face dotted with guilt and shame to match the snow stained gray-black that decorated the streets. "Kwanza? D-damn it, what other holidays are there? Um agnostic, maybe? Happy holidays then?" It was a valiant effort coming from the older man, especially considering how he kept trying despite his friend's obvious increasing depression. "Shit, shit, _I'm sorry._ I'm sorry, I don't know what you celebrate."

"I" Fucked up, he fucked up so badly. Thought he was helping, thought he was making it better and thought he was saving them all troubles and money when he's just gone and done the complete opposite. "N-no. It's fine, Petey. It's great." He looked up, attempted a reassuring smile. 

"Oh, good." No more awkward fidgeting or stammering, just a pair of glasses getting pushed back up the bridge of a wind burned pink nose. "You, ah, had me going there for a minute. I thought that I had offended you somehow, or that you were mad, or  "

"It's _great."_ If he wasn't careful, Johnny would end up acting on how sick he felt. He knew Reed promised him illness was impossible by now, thanks to his abnormally high body temperature, but he certainly felt like he had a killer bug. He just knew better. He knew the crackle of hell firing and the initial explosion and he knew the way he _screamed_ loud enough to get Susan running downstairs. He knew she had gone to the _hospital_ because of it, he knew she got hurt (not bad, smoke inhalation mainly) and he knew _it was his fault._

"Johnny?"

"What'd you get Harry?" 

"Something different. Why?"

"N-no reason." Somehow the gift ended up in his hands. It sat unopened, with nothing more than him nervously strumming his fingers against the sides of the box.

"You're supposed to open it." A possible _'No shit, Sherlock'_ came to mind but he let the thought die there. Worn hands that had been skinned multiple times, too many to count, pushed the gift back at Peter's chest. "Johnny?"

_(Johnny Storm would end up just like his father.)_

"I don't have a gift for you." When Peter didn't recoil, the box was shoved harder against his chest. "I-it it's gon  I mean  I didn't and shit, I'm sorry, I'm sorry, Petey" He braced and waited for the inevitable turn that would relieve the two of them from best friend duties. He stiffened when Peter sat next to him on the bench and slung an arm over his shoulder.

"I think that there's more to this story. Don't hide one from a reporter, Johnny."

"You're their photographer, not a journalist." Was he worried? Concerned? Johnny doesn't deserve that, doesn't deserve any of the kind-hearted traits Peter possesses at all, so Johnny is nothing but confused when his present is dropped into his lap. He shoves it back but Peter will have none of that.

"Same diff. Now, spill. What happened?"

"Don't you read the newspapers?"

 **X.**  
"Jesus _Christ._ What happened here? Johnny!"

Snow falls in big, lazy flakes that cling to eyelashes and hair, freezing the youngest member of the Fantastic Four. Gray and black ash is spotted with a white flurry. A roll of caution tape makes Johnny worry who is more dangerous  himself or the officers? From across the street, he can still make out the vague outside of what used to be his house. Johnny bites his lip and tries returning his present again. "Yours was in there." The more he fidgets, the more he squirms and the more he curses, the harder he pinches himself and begs god to take it back, to make it a dream, the tighter Peter holds him. "I didn't mean to."

"I know you didn't."

_"It was an accident."_

"I know."

 **XI.**

"I've got it!"

"Got what?"

"The answer to your passing grade for the quiz tomorrow." Peter shoves a pad of graph paper in his face. "Spider-Man starts on a lamp post, two meters off of the ground. He shoots a web at the Lipstick Building to hoist himself up and into a window that the Green Goblin has just climbed in. Assuming the wind is going at a steady rate of 2 miles per hour, and give him an average mass of two hundred kilograms. His acceleration  " 

"Petey, you're making no sense at all. What?"

Peter sighs and set the pad down. Sitting on the table in front of where Johnny has his chair pulled up to the desk. "Your favorite racecar driver has   you know, this would probably be a lot easier if you could actually see the numbers in your textbook. Why don't you turn the lamp on?"

_"Don't!"_ Johnny and Susan have nothing to do with their father aside from the occasional visits Johnny makes to visit the first man he's certain he's learned to hate. The Fantastic Four have made enough of a name for themselves so that everything should be fine. Reed's worked something out with the mayor, or maybe the mayor just likes them, but for the strangest of reasons, there's an actual income. Susan might be moving in with that bastard and even Reed has suggested leaving Long Island when he's finished with high school. 

Johnny and Susan have nothing to do with their father. 

Johnny and Susan have nothing to do with their father.

Johnny and Susan have _nothing_ to do with their father.

Johnny accidentally burned down the house he had grown up in to a stack of ashes. There was insurance money. They moved into their aunt's old house. He took the train into Queens for school every day despite every bone in his body screaming to turn their superhero work into a full time gig. Johnny turned eighteen three weeks ago. Johnny found himself stumbling to Peter's doors on nights when he couldn't stand to go home to an empty house because they weren't there, they weren't there and they would never be there! 

_(Johnny refused to end up like his father.)_

"Why not? It's already dark out."

It isn't even his house and the blonde slowly realizes he's slammed a hand over the _ON_ switch to block it. 

_(Johnny ended up at Peter's doorstep with the light gone from his eyes. Johnny ended up at Peter's doorstep in the middle of the night with eyes stained red, a broken shell of the obnoxious hothead he surely was. Johnny spent the night choking out apologies to people Peter had never met, people who weren't even there.)_

Johnny licked his lips and retracted his hand. "Sorry. Old habits die hard, I guess."

_("S-Sue will never be anything like you, oh god, I'm sorry! I promised I wouldn't and I did and I'm sorry, I'm sorry!")_

Peter leaned in and butted foreheads gently. "Girls don't like penny pinchers," he teased.

_(Johnny **refused** to end up like his father.) _

"Screw you. I'm sick and tired of studying."

"Need a distraction?"

_(Johnny was cracking, burning up the last shreds of whatever wick he had. He was a fool, he was losing it and he didn't know how to stop, didn't know how not to hurt himself and didn't know how to not hurt others in return at this point.)_

Bare hands, too warm to be anything but pleasant in the middle of a cold spring, darted up, snagged Peter belt loops and tugged the brunette closer to the edge of the table. "Is that a threat or a promise?" The first time Johnny Storm chokes is in the eighth grade and he is standing before one Elizabeth Baker, a stammering, red-faced fool. But sitting before his best friend, letting his palms settle on Peter's upper thighs, he's not the red-faced fool anymore. He's gained himself quite a collection right now. If Peter suspected he had been around every block by now, heartbreaker that he was, he would have to inform his friend he hasn't reached out to other neighborhoods just yet.

"Depends on if you plan on making anything of it."

For a moment, Johnny runs through his mental schedule of the week to see if he has any reason to be awake tomorrow morning before ten. As far as he could remember, his morning was empty. Susan didn't live with him to expect him back early or back at all. In short, there's nothing to keep him from sitting up taller in his seat to press his lips against his best friend's. After one of Peter's hands move to settle on either of his shoulders, Johnny cares for nothing other than the kiss, notices nothing but how they feel together, how Peter is always cooler and seems to be addicted to the warmth of the Human Torch. _("So, our heater is shot again and it's kind of in the middle of the coldest day of the year")_ Nothing mattered until Peter's hands finally pushed him away.

"Aunt May is downstairs," Peter warned.

"You're already panting," was the counter.

 _"My door doesn't lock._ The lock is still busted."

His building reputation should have preceded him but his friend seemed to need a reminder. "Tomorrow's Saturday. Your shift doesn't start until eleven." When the once king of the nerds started to protest, voice a suddenly low whisper, the current all-star quarterback laughed. "Hey, Four Eyes, I've got an equation for you. Aunt May checked in on us," he had to glance at the clock off on the nightstand, "twenty minutes ago. The door is closed and she's folding laundry. We've already eaten dinner and I'll die if I have to look at a textbook one more time tonight, but I have one _incredible_ distraction within my ask. Assuming friction here isn't dissipative, but rather, grows exponentially, how much can we get done before narrowly avoiding getting caught?"

 **XII.**

Johnny Storm does not play by the rules. Not by the rules of social standards that state no member of a clique may wander and associate with lesser mortals. Not by the rules of society that state a good guy, a _hero_ was never to cause harm to others. _(He and Susan really **did** apologize profusely about totaling that one truck.) _ Not by the rules of any standard dating book which praised going steady, having strong with relationships. _(With every time he was dumped, the next romance lasted shorter, the crash was even harder and he'd need more flings between or even during.)_ Johnny Storm didn't even follow the rules of bribery and low class cheating. He never kept his hands from wandering, never kept them from settling and rubbing and he most certainly did not keep his lips very far from Peter's skin as he spoke.

"N-not enough," Peter answered before he caved and pulled Johnny in for another kiss.

 **XIII.**

Johnny Storm will end up just like his father.

"Knock it off, man! Don't be stupid!" If it weren't for the whole concept of keeping a secret identity, Peter would have been holding back with a web lasso by now. Johnny demands nothing other than his release, jerks forward and oh, the look he gives into the camera. _"Damn it, Johnny! Cool it!"_ A humid rain coats Flushing, Queens, which may fully well be why Johnny is in such a poor mood to begin with, but it'll take more than kind words to pull him from this slump. 

Johnny _refused_ to end up just like his father.

(Which meant that by the time the reporter, an avid support of Senator Kelly and both the superhero and mutant registration acts, leaves their sight, Johnny has crumbled himself to his knees.)

 **XIV.**

The same asshole reporter finds them again. This time, he strikes the Fantastic Four as they limp their way back into the Baxter Building. He repeats the same taunt, but now if the presence of Susan as well. Susan who unlike Johnny, has the blasted ability to disappear then and there.

_("How are we supposed to trust the Storm siblings as heroes when they are the children of a **convicted** murderer?") _


End file.
